Samsung SPH-A940 Commercial

"Samsung buys yearly ad spots and this time every year they promote their most powerful Sprint phone. Last year's ad spot was the A700. This year's is the A940.

Unfortunately, most people don't remember TV ads from only a year ago, where we went through the same process of the A700 being in TV ads and not in-stores.

These ads are made and targeted long before carrier and device approval is completed, and are always running before the launch of the device. Samsung does this to save money, not create confusion."

9/26/05:

Samsung is showcasing the SPH-A940 in television spots, pointing to an immediate release of the phone, and Sprint's 3G EV-DO network. It is important to note that this is not a Sprint commercial, but a Samsung one, which are rare.

Tuesday, September 20, 2005

Samsung Supplies Wibro System to Sprint Nextel

Thursday, 15 September 2005Establishes Cooperation in Developing International Standards:

Samsung Electronics announced Thursday that it agreed on supplying Wibro(Wireless Broadband) system to Sprint Nextel of the US.

The handset maker said that they would test Wibro system and devices jointly with Sprint-Nextel and provide a pilot service to carry out field tests and compatibility with Sprint data networks. The two also agreed to strengthen cooperation to promote Wibro as an international standard and technological advancement.

As Wibro makes its way to the world’s largest telecom market, it would get more momentum to be spread to the world and be an international standard, Samsung said. This is the first time that homegrown telecom technology and system penetrate the US market.

Samsung dominates OLED market

20 September 2005Shipments of OLED grow 82% with Samsung accounting for 30% of sales.

The Korean electronics giant Samsung is dominating the soaring market for organic light emitting diode (OLED) displays, according to the latest set of figures from the US-based analyst DisplaySearch.

In its most recent “Quarterly OLED Shipment and Forecast Report”, DisplaySearch reveals that OLED shipments in Q2 2005 grew 82% over the same period in 2004 to reach 14.2 m units worth $124.8m. Samsung SDI dominated the market accounting of 30% ($37.2m) of sales in the period, followed by RiTdisplay, Pioneer, Univision and LGE (see table).

OLED league table

DisplaySearch says that the growth in shipments was largely due to an explosion in demand (1300% growth) for passive matrix (PMOLED) displays for portable music (mp3) players. It believes that OLEDs have now captured about 40% of the market. The reason for dramatic transition from LCDs to OLEDs in portable equipment is likely to be OLED’s reduced power consumption which helps extend battery life.

OLED applications

“All of the growth is in PMOLEDs using small molecule material,” said Display Search in its report. “PLED [Polymer light emitting diode] material panel producers now represent less than 3% of the total shipments.”

While this is good news for Kodak which pioneered small molecule OLED technology and has now licensed it more than a dozen firms it must be worrying for companies such as CDT of the UK which are developing rival polymer organic light emitting material (PLED).

Last month, Philips decided to exit the PLED market after saying that its PolyLED business did not become financially viable within an acceptable period of time. OTB of The Netherlands purchased the business for an undisclosed sum of cash.